The Overwhelming Knowledge of Rainclouds.

Chicago, Illinois is where we are, and it is rather magnificent. Full of incredibly contrasting architecture, corners to explore and lakeside beach walks! We have been here for ten days, after a lengthy (3 day!) drive over here from our previous show city of Houston, Texas. I don’t know that I quite appreciated the size of America until that drive, which was only crossing a small handful of states! Safe to say, I have gotten used to driving on the ‘wrong’ side after driving one of the circus trucks for that length of time.

Halfway through the journey, at a non specific and unremarkable stage of the journey, something quite brilliant occurred. As I was driving along the freeway, with what seemed to be prairie lands either side, something rather magnificent began to occur around me. Beginning with a pattering of rain on the roof the vehicle, raindrops began to fleck the screen and windows surrounding me. Following this, the raindrops grew larger, until they started to blend together as they spilled down the glass. Before long, torrential rain surrounded me. Just as I switched on the windscreen wipers to try to see the road in front me a deafening crack of thunder could be heard, before the most wide stretching and all consuming lightning bolt broke across the skyline in front of me. Filling my gaze with white light, the shadowy purple sky above the fields either side of the road was soon lit up with natural strobe lighting. Flashes and shatterings of blinding light tore the sky open until I was unsure whether I was driving on a road, or flying through space. I can honestly and criminally admit that I have no idea where the tarmac of that road ended, and where the night sky began. 

In direct parallel to the natural events playing out around me, my body was lit up with electric energy as my heart rate fastened, my skin was awash with tingling goose bumps, and my eyes wide with curiosity. There was no one else in that car, but suddenly I felt the most heightened sense of awareness of life. I don’t know how many minutes it lasted. But I know how it felt, just as physically as I could feel the blood rush through my veins and organs in those moments. Soon enough, the event had passed and I sleepily adjusted back into the monotony of driving, the radio (which had cut out, although I hadn’t even noticed) and wondering when we would next need to stop for gas. But the memory has long stayed with me.

The reason I describe this event to you, is because I feel it is the best possible way of analysing the most important thing to me in the entire of this world. That feeling, those events – they are how I feel when I truly breathe. When I write, when I dance. It is how I feel when I am challenged in conversation, when a new idea comes to me, and when I notice the simplest and most communicative art in the world around me. The physical sensations I described could just as easily have been describing how I felt when I auditioned for the Lido in Paris, or whenever I have had the opportunity to dance alone in studios, or when I have taught ballet in a class situation. Goose bumps and all arresting physical sensations have overtaken my body in moments of elation, inspiration, and education. I have seen lightning break open before my eyes and felt the reverberations of thunder claps thud through my chest when I have found a like mindedness in another person to share my ideas with. And, most deliciously, when I have loved, and truly been loved. With no adjustment to the narrative, these moments in life are my thunder and lightning. I find no better analogy, at this time. 

When do you feel the most alive? When have you felt the most arrested by a moment, person or feeling? Which moment, or moments? 

I used to fear thunder and lightning. I also used to fear the kind of life that I knew I truly wanted, but was afraid to try for. I ran from aliveness, and hid in the shadows of the safe. I now actively construct daily life seeking such moments out from wherever they may be hiding. Sometimes it might just be an aggressive and tumultuous few minutes of dancing in my hotel room alone before I head out to go to the show each evening. Or it might be a few hours lost between bookshelves in the local second hand bookshop. Or it might be writing a few pages of my notebook between acts, or driving between states and finding a few minutes of lightning that catch the edges of my skin and lift them away from my bones for a few delicious out of body moments.

This, in essence, is what the basis from which much of Liberty’s Arts & Wellness Centre will feed from in it’s developing growth. It is not my own thought processes from which it should grow – but instead those which visitors will find for themselves.

We are not factory products. We are people. Made up of an innumerable amount of segments, corners, needs and hungers. It is about each individual finding out what it is that makes them lose everything to the moment they are in. The moment where they give themselves over to trust their feelings and judgements entirely, releasing themselves for a collection of moments into only themselves. 

Recently, I have been trying to write poetry. Not altogether too successfully, as I seem to keep finding myself flowing over into familiar paragraphed chunks of writing. The ability to fit my thoughts into a few concise lines has proved rather difficult! What have you been working on recently? Where have you been the last few days?

I have also been experimenting with interviews, and I am currently gathering my notes from two recent significant interviews with two wonderful women that I have been fortunate enough to cross paths with in the recent few months of my American adventures. More of that in my next post – once I work out how to fit hours of material into a readable and concise reading space for you all! It seems I am better at extending and expanding than I am folding things back into handfuls and bite sizes. A work in progress, without doubt.

As I finish writing this particular entry, I am curled up on the windowsill of my Chicago hotel room, watching the sun set on the city whilst listening to the gentle piano sounds of Ludovic Einaudi - the piano music that I cannot write a word without. The skies are clear, and my pulse is calm. 

But then, you never know when the next thunder and lighting may break out in front of you.

To you, to purple rain, and to life.

Helen 
Victoria.